major garrett and nancy cordes on today's developments in the budget battle. we don't know who will win powerball, but we know who lost. anna werner on the people who should never buy a ticket. and why can't war vets find work at home? elaine quijano on one man who found a solution that no one saw ngming. >> when your 17-year-old son on veteran's day tells you how proud he is, you keep going. oing. captioning sponsored by cbs ponsored by cbs this is the "cbs evening news" with scott pelley. >> pelley: good evening. three b.p. oil company employees appeared in federal court today, heo of them charged with 11 counts of involuntary manslaughter. those are for the 11 crewmen killed in 2010 when the deepwater horizon explode excluded and sank in the gulf of mexico. the well ran wild for more than 80 days, unleashing the largest accidental oil spill in history. mark strassmann is covering the

courthouse for us in new orleans tonight. mark. mark. >> reporter: scott, this prosecution moves away from the b.p. spill's environmental and economic impacts. instead, its the preventable deaths of 11 people. bob kaluza oversaw safety for b.p. aboard the deepwater horizon when the rig exploded. >> i did not cause this tragedy. i am innocent. and i put my trust, reputation, and future in the hands of the judge and the jury. >> reporter: donald vidrine, another b.p. senior supervisor aboard the rig, also pleaded not guilty. they were in charge of a test that indicated a combustible gas had seeped into well. the indictment alleges kaluza and vadrine didn't call engineers on shore to discuss the abnormal readings as required. instead, they allowed work on the well to go on. hours later, volatile gas came up the well and exploded.

>> i'm angry that the two middle management guys are going to take the fall. >> reporter: stephen stone, a worker on the deepwater horizon, escaped on a life boat. he's haunted by memories of fellow workers, some injured, shers jumping 60 feet into the gulf. >> i used to be a really happy guy, and now, i'm just angry. just angry all time. >> reporter: shaun clarke, bob kaluza's lawyer, says someone should be held accountable, just not his client. is your client a scapegoat? >> yes, he is absolutely. >> reporter: stone believes the two rig supervisors should be prosecuted but also thinks b.p.'s senior leaders have got away scott free. >> we'll send these guys to jail while we're sitting here, you know, collecting our cash and laughing all the way to the bank upon you know. until those guys realize when they do this stuff, they could actually go from sleeping in silk sheets to sleeping in a jail cell, it's just not going to change. >> reporter: a third b.p. employee, a former executive, also faced obstruction of justice charges here for

allegedly lying about how much oil was gushing into the gulf. kaluza and vadrine, scott, could face 10 years in prison on each manslaughter charge. >> pelley: also today, mark, the obama administration banned b.p. from getting any new contracts to drill on federal property. the administration said b.p. showed "a lack of business integrity." tomorrow, president obama will send his top negotiators to meet tith congressional leaders. they have only weeks now to head off a big tax increase for most americans. the income tax rates will jump automatically january 1. it will be such a shock to the system that it has been called the fiscal cliff. our coverage starts on the white house lawn tonight with major garrett. major. >> reporter: scott, the saesident said for the first time, there is a two-step process to averting the fiscal cliff. republicans must act now to prevent a tax increase for households earning less than $250,000. do that now, president obama said, and he and congress can

work out the details of spending cuts later. ( applause ) before a crowd of supporters, the white house invited from the mid-atlantic region, president obama put congressional republicans on notice. >> it's too important for washington to screw this up. now is the time for us to work on what we all agreed to, which is lets keep middle class taxes low. that's what our economy needs. that's what the american people deserve. gd if we get this part of it right, then a lot of the other issues surrounding deficit reduction in a fair and balanced, responsible way are going to be a whole lot easier. >> reporter: white house officials say mr. obama is not interested in personally meeting with congressional republicans because those meetings did little to resolve the 2010 debt ceiling crisis. but when mr. obama later skipped congressional meetings and campaigned to extend the 2% payroll tax cut and maintain lower student loan interest rates, he won. the president is primarily focused on step one of this process-- winning the middle

class tax cut debate. step two is being led by his treasury secretary jim geithner and liaison rob nabors. they are going to work with congress on spending cut and other fiscal cliff details. the first meeting will be tomorrow on the hill. >> pelley: major, president said today he thought all this could be done by christmas. why does he think so? >> reporter: because that is the big takeaway, scott, from the president's conversation on saturday with house speaker john boehner. the two agreed it was in foeryone's best interest to get a fiscal cliff deal sooner rather than later, both agreed to aim for one before christmas, but they also acknowledged, scott, it will be very difficult to achieve that. >> pelley: thank you, major. will the president's team find a receptive republican congress? nancy cordes is on capitol hill for us tonight. nancy. >> reporter: well, scott, one top republican aide actually told me today that he sees these talks as one-sided, that

republicans have been making all the proposals, and speaker boehner said he's still waiting for a balanced offer from the white house. >> republicans are willing to att revenue on the table but it's time for the president and democrats to get serious about the spending problem that our country has. >> reporter: today on capitol hill, erskine bowles met with both sides. he's the co-chair of simpson- bowles commission that drew up a leading plan to cut the federal debt. >> i upon hopeful but i wouldn't put me in the optimistic wetegory. we have a long way to go and a very few days to get it done. >> reporter: president obama has been urging republicans to vote now to keep taxes from rising on households that make less than $250,000 a year and haggle over rates for the wealthy later. one top republican, tom cole of oklahoma, urged his colleagues today to give in. a lot of republicans think you give up all your bargaining power if you do that. >> you know, i respect that opinion but i don't agree with it. the reality is i don't think the american people ought to be leverage in a negotiation. and i think if they are leverage, it's actually the

leverage of the democrats. they're now telling americans basically, oh, republicans are willing to raise your taxes. well, we're not. we don't want to raise taxes on anybody. so i think the best thing to do is to take that issue off the table early. >> reporter: but speaker boehner quickly shot down the idea. >> i told tom earlier in our conference meeting that i disagreed with him. >> reporter: speaker boehner's aides described the talks with the white house today as business-like. they say they're in communication all the time. and that the fact that speaker boehner himself isn't sitting down with the president shouldn't be taken as a sign that talks aren't progress, scott. >> pelley: time is running, thanks, nancy. we've been get a lot of encouraging news about the economy lately and we got more today. in its most recent survey, the federal reserve found that consumer spending and economic growth are up in all regions of the country except those affected by hurricane sandy. moving on now to syria's civil war. at least 34 people were killed today when two car bombs ripped through a suburb of damascus.

syria's assad dictatorship has been trying to crush a rebellion that broke out more than a year and a half ago. it is very rare for western journalists to report from inside the capital, but elizabeth palmer is there for us tonight. >> reporter: today's bombing spilled the blood of neighbors and friends. jaramana is a tight-knit community of christians and jews. religious minority groups in syria who are traditional supporters of president bashar al-assad. after the huge explosion, local people immediately pitched in to repair the damage to shops and homes. and to comfort the families of the victims. this mother's 21-year-old son, a medical student, went to investigate when the first bomb blew up and was killed minutes later by the second. outside local businessman walid blped carry the wounded to safety. what is this on your jacket? >> it's blood.

it's blood of all the people. >> reporter: but he can't or won't say who he thinks is to blame. who did it? >> i don't know. i don't know. >> reporter: it's a loaded question in syria, where people of many faiths, christians and muslims have generally got along but the war has put that at risk. attacks like these bombings could ignite vicious rounds of revenge and reprisals. ali whose son was killed in may is syria's minister for national reconciliation. "there have been hundreds of incidents" he admitted designed to spark religious conflict but so far it's been limited. most people want the violence to stop so they can resume their normal lives. but that prospect looks increasingly remote. >> pelley: elizabeth palmer is joining us in the syrian capital, damascus. elizabeth, one of the things that's preventing them from leading normal lives is the

dictatorship's air force. and we got a remarkable piece of video into the newsroom today. you've already seen it. that appears to be a rebel missile hitting one of the dictatorships helicopters. elizabeth, how have things changed on the ground for the rebels? >> reporter: well, it does appear that they have a stock of these weapons, some of them looted from the syrian military's own bases. what we don't know is whether that was one lucky strike or whether they're going to be able to use them systematically. we don't know whether they've got the training and they are notoriously difficult to use with accuracy and precision. >> pelley: a civil war with no end in sight, elizabeth, thank you. with powerball looming is there such a thing as lottery addiction? more than 100 are dead in a factory making clothing brands you know. and trouble on the west coast, a

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companies were manufactured there. so we asked jim axelrod to look into it. >> reporter: three men are now in custody. they are suspected of locking workers into the clothing factory before the fire started. julhas alam went to the burned out factory. we spoke to him by phone. >> total devastation, machines are burned, ceiling fans are, those are melted. aren the fire extinguishers were burned. >> reporter: this is alam in the factory, holding a disney sweatshirt. >> i saw faded glory. i saw wal-mart. i saw disney. >> reporter: alam also identified clothing made for sean combs' enyce label. both disney and wal-mart say their clothing suppliers in bangladesh were doing business with the factory without their knowledge. disney says it hasn't allowed them to manufacture disney branded products for at least the last 12 months.

wal-mart says the tazreen factory was no longer authorized to produce much for the company. scott nova is the executive director of the workers right consortiums. he traveled to bangladesh after another factory fire in 2010 to investigate workers' conditions. >> the fact is that their clothing was in this factory being produced by these workers and they are responsible for protecting the safety and the lives of the workers who make their clothing. >> reporter: thousands are now protesting conditions in the factories that make bangladesh the world's second-largest apparel producer. 300 workers in bangladesh have died there in fires since 2006. the minimum wage-- 18 cents an hour. >> what we're seeing here is a huge gap between the corporate responsibility rhetoric of these brands and retailers and the actual practices in their supply chains. >> reporter: so what would that 18 cents an hour in bangladesh mean in an economy like the one here in the united states? well, according to the world bank, scott, 18 cents an hour there equates to a wage of

roughly 55 cents an hour here. >> pelley: jim, thank you very much. the west coast is facing several ugys of rough weather. parts of northern california were hit by high winds and heavy rain today. a truck crash closed the i-5 for hours. trees were knocked down, power knocked out. forecasters say the worst is yet to come. some places may get up to 18 inches of rain over the next five days. that half-billion-dollar powerball jackpot is a dream for many but a nightmare for some. that story is next. nyquil doesn't unstuff your nose. what? [ male announcer ] it doesn't have a decongestant. no way. [ male announcer ] sorry. alka-seltzer plus fights your worst cold symptoms plus has a fast acting decongestant to relieve your stuffy nose. [ sighs ] thanks! [ male announcer ] you're welcome. that's the cold truth! [ male announcer ] alka-seltzer plus.

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it's a harmless dream for most, but for a few, it's a dangerous gamble. and we asked anna werner to look into that. >> reporter: florida sold 20,000 powerball tickets a minute today. >> i'm going to pay for hers, but lisa metzler didn't buy one. it's been a tough road for you, hasn't it? >> oh, yeah. >> reporter: the letter carrier is fighting an addiction to gambling that cost her $70,000, as much as $10,000 on scratch- off lottery tickets. what did gambling do to your life? >> gambling flipped my life upside down. i shut out my family. i shut out my friends. it was all i wanted to do. >> reporter: you were hooked. >> i was hooked from day one. >> and they meet wednesdays at 6:00 p.m. >> reporter: metzler got help after she called this hot line run by the florida council of compulsive gambling, but last year, florida cut its budget by $1.5 million while spending $30 tellion on lottery advertising.

pat fowler heads the council. >> a lot of the funding that our organization received was utilized for marketing and outreach because we know that's how we get help to the people who need it. >> reporter: six states have cut help for compulsive gamblers as they've expanded gambling. for example, new york cut 41 programs but spent $85 million advertising its lottery. >> yeah, that kind of rich. >> reporter: state-approved gambling generates more than $20 billion, twice as much as movie ticket sales. powerball profits fund schools and scholarships. $45 million in florida alone since the last jackpot. but lottery hoopla can hide some of the costs-- financial and human. >> people out there need help. if they don't give the funding that is needed for this, there are going to be so many more cases like mine. >> reporter: so who's buying all those powerball tickets? well, there are buyers across

the board but, scott, a report out of texas this year found less-educated and more minority residents spent the most money per capita on lottery games. about $55 a month, much of it on this scratch-off lottery tickets considered the most addictive kind. >> pelley: anna, thank you. a marine faces his toughest challenge-- finding jobs for fellow vets. that's next. hey sis, it's so great to see you. you, too! oh, cloudy glasses. you didn't have to come over! actually, honey, i think i did... oh? you did? whoa, ladies, easy. hi. cascade kitchen counselor. we can help avoid this with cascade complete pacs. see, over time, cascade complete pacs fight film buildup two times better than finish quantum. to help leave glasses sparkling shiny! too bad it doesn't work on windows. okay, i'm outta here. cascade. the clear choice.

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of washington about the future of medicare and social security. anncr: but you deserve straight talk about the options on the... table and what they mean for you and your family. ancr: aarp is cutting through all the political spin. because for our 37 million members, only one word counts. get the facts at earnedasay.org. let's keep medicare... and social security strong for generations to come. infrastructure. the dire wag about future catastrophes nt more than a million troops will rejoin civilian life over the next five years. but unemployment for those returning from afghanistan and iraq is already 10%. a lot of the returning troops spent years rebuilding villages in the war zone. well, now elaine quijano has found there is a sudden surge

in hiring in a few american towns that look like they lost a war. >> reporter: bruce bradford spent 12 years in the army fixing vehicles and rebuilding communities in iraq and afghanistan. he was discharged in 2010 and has been out of work since. >> you put so much into serving your country -- [ pause/voice breaking ] >> -- that once you take the uniform off, it's almost as if you lose a sense of pride and a sense of dignity because you wake up and you realize, "i used to stand for something." >> reporter: that's why bradford soldiered through a foot injury, to get to a veterans job fair in toms river, new jersey. >> really appreciate it. >> reporter: kevin schmiegel is a retired marine who runs "hiring our heroes." >> this is not charity. this is about connecting talented young men and women, giving them the tools they need to connect with an employer,

and helping them land a career after they serve in our country. >> reporter: toms river is schmiegel's hometown and a place that can use the skills of vets who have been to war. >> i think the most important thing about the event for me is that from something bad, something good can come of it. >> reporter: here, 40,000 homes were ripped up by hurricane sandy. employers need carpenters, roofers and electricians. bruce bradford talked to each one and is waiting on call- backs. >> i don't think you'll find many more around on crutches today. >> when you meet people like bruce, it makes you want to work all the more harder because here is a person that has a unique skill set and that can immediately impact what's happening on the ground here in toms river. >> reporter: before sandy, schmiegel had already held more than 300 employment fairs for vets. >> what kind of work are you looking for? >> reporter: he has connected 10,000 with jobs. >> being in a job like this is exhausting and it's very rewarding.

there have been times where i have actually wanted to walk away from it. >> reporter: you don't have to be doing this, though. >> when your 17-year-old son on veterans day tells you how proud he is, you keep going. >> reporter: a faithful marine whose mission continues. >> i want you to talk to every, single employer here. >> reporter: elaine quijano, cbs news, toms river, new jersey. >> and that's the "cbs evening news" for tonight. for all of us at cbs news all around the world, good night. >> your realtime captioner: linda marie macdonald good evening, i'm allen martin. >> i'm dana king. we are keeping an "eye on the storm" on this wet and windy wednesday. this is video from san francisco this morning when the rain came down really hard all across the bay area. things have cleared up since then but it's just a brief break in a series of storms. >> all that rain earlier today

increased the danger on the roads. signs warn drivers to slow down on highway 17 because of the slippery wet roads heading into the mountains to santa cruz and scotts valley. we spotted a few wrecks on the roads today. a fender-bender on highway 87 in san jose clogged traffic for miles. the crash involved at least three vehicles but we haven't heard of serious injuries. >> this is what it looked like going over the bay bridge into san francisco this morning. a lot of wind, rain and plenty of brake lights. we have team coverage of the storm and its aftermath as we wait for round 2. linda yee is in daly city.da lin is in san francisco. paul deanno reports from the weather center. >> this is round one soft least rainy of the three. lima valley nearly 2" of rainfall just this morning. petaluma more than 1.5". more than 1" of rainfall for santa rosa.